Warhol is here
Exhibitions boost city's cultural possibilities
SEPTEMBER 27, 2010 1:53 p.m. 
(11)
| For more information, go to www.uscupstate.edu/warhol. |
Jane Nodine almost threw away the University of South Carolina Upstate’s chance at owning a collection of photographs by famous pop artist Andy Warhol.
Back in 2007, Nodine was cleaning papers off her desk when a letter with the Andy Warhol Foundation’s return address caught her attention.
“I thought it was just another solicitation,” she said. “I get solicitations from foundations and other groups all the time.”
Before she threw it in the trash, Nodine decided to open it and see what the organization wanted.
When she began reading the letter, Nodine, an art professor at USC Upstate and director of the school’s Curtis R. Harley Art Gallery, was shocked. The foundation wanted to offer the school a collection of photographs made by Warhol, considered by some one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
It was the kind of collection – and exhibit when the photographs were shown for the first time in public – Nodine knew could have a big impact on the school and on Spartanburg.
“This moves Spartanburg from the ordinary toward the extraordinary,” she said. “It’s a signal we are a vital and challenging cultural community.”
Steve Wong, marketing director for the Chapman Cultural Center, said just Warhol’s name recognition has boosted the Spartanburg Art Museum’s name across the region.
“Karl (Hollander, the museum’s executive director) and the Museum are commended for having the vision to bring such noteworthy exhibits to Spartanburg, advancing our position as a cultural Mecca,” he said. “The Chapman Cultural Center is establishing itself as a world-class institution.”
Warhol is probably best known for his paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans and Hollywood celebrities but he was also a prolific photographer.
Through the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Photographic Legacy program, 28,500 of the artist’s photographs were distributed to 180 colleges and universities throughout the country – USC Upstate and South Carolina State University were the only two in South Carolina.
USC Upstate received 152 of Warhol’s photographs, a small slice of the artist’s portfolio, but a representative sample of his body of work, Hollander said.
“Most people don’t know Warhol had a very long career as an illustrator, advertising designer, sculptor and that he always had an interest in photography,” Nodine said. “When you have a big name like Warhol, it draws them in.”
The exhibitions feature a large selection of USC Upstate’s 152 color Polaroids, which Warhol used for his serigraphs and portraits of the famous, and black and white photographs.
The photos have never been exhibited.
Hollander said Warhol used photography as his way of note-taking.
“We all make artistic notes in some way,” Hollander said. “An artist observes the world and then comments on it.”
The photographs owned by USC Upstate, which had to commit to exhibiting the photographs as an educational tool, were taken from 1973 to 1983.
Some of the subjects will be familiar. Lauren Hutton. Treat Williams. Christopher Reeve, Dracula, Pele’ and Chris Evert.
“Warhol would take about 200 portraits of each,” Hollander said. “Of course, he didn’t have Photoshop, so he would cut and paste. If he liked the hands in one picture, he’d paste it on another one. It was an interesting set of skills. He’d cut and paste putting it together and then there was his artistic will.”
The museum exhibition also features a “tin room,” replicating a corner in Warhol’s studio where he would take the Polaroids with his Big Shot camera.
Warhol was the person who said everybody would have their “15 minutes of fame.” Visitors to the exhibit will be able to get their picture taken in the museum’s version of the tin room and have it displayed during the exhibition.
The museum’s exhibition will also feature other pop artists Claus Oldenburg, Jim Dine and Phyllis Yes.
“Abstract expressionism was very popular at the time and we know every art movement was in revolt from the one before,” Hollander said. “With pop art, they’d take the ordinary and make it art by paying attention to it.”
To round out the exhibition, the museum asked children in the COLORS after-school art program to create their own versions of Warhol art.
“People like Beyonce got Warhol-ized,” Hollander said. “Children seem to find pop art very accessible.”
USC Upstate’s Warhol exhibition will feature a selection of the photographs, Warhol-related memorabilia, including Polaroid cameras, commercial ad designs, reproduction prints and objects identifying the influences Warhol made on popular culture.
The university will also sponsor a series of lectures about the artist.
While the exhibitions will give Spartanburg a look at an often overlooked part of the artist’s career, Nodine said they will have an even greater impact.
“This will, hopefully, set a precedent,” she said. “It will tell everybody that Spartanburg has high standards and wants and highly desires these types of cultural opportunities.”
FEBRUARY 3, 2011 3:48 p.m. (1)
NOVEMBER 19, 2010 12:45 p.m. (0)
SEPTEMBER 9, 2010 9:04 p.m. (0)
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